Manifesto For Change

The Manifesto For Change is a truly "green" model for housing, art, micro-business, spirituality, interdependence, self-accountability, care-giving and community....

Thursday, June 25, 2009;

The Manifesto For Change is a truly "green" model for housing, art, micro-business, spirituality, interdependence, self-accountability, care-giving and community that incorporates the teaching of our elders, ancestors and spiritual leaders in harmony with Mother Earth that ultimately can be launched in any city in the U.S. with a Revolutionary Giving Ally.

The Manifesto for Change was created in a 16 year process by a multi-lingual, multi-racial, multi-generational, group of landless, indigenous elders, children, families and folks engaged in a life-long struggle with poverty, racism, incarceration, welfare systems,white supremacy, mis-education, landlessness, ableism, Non-Profit-Profiteering and violence

The Manifesto for Change was introduced at the Revolutionary Change Session on June 19, 2009 as a template for global and local revolutionary change.

1. The Declaration of Inter-dependence

To act on indigenous values of accountability and care-giving with the goal of moving indigenous folks, poor communities of color permanently out of the Prison Industrial Complex which includes po'lice dependence,abuse and destruction.

Excerpt from the Opening Statement of the Declaration of Inter-Dependence launched on July 4th, 2008

Through the RECLAIMM project, POOR Magazine is promoting a new form of indigenous, sustainable "green" equity and resource re-distribution that will enable us to reclaim and build equity, support and promote micro-business, micro-economics and land ownership in our native urban communities.

3. The HOMEFULLNESS Project
Permanent housing units for landless* families and individuals, following a model of co-housing, which includes a home for all of the following components;

A site for the F.A.M.I.L.Y. (Family Access to Multi-cultural Intergenerational Learning with our Youth) school, a revolutionary on-site child care and school for children and families in poverty, which incorporates a social justice and arts multi-cultural and multi-lingual curriculum for families and children 2 to 102 yrs.

A site for POOR Magazine, The Race, Poverty, and Media Justice Institute, Community Newsroom and all of POOR's indigenous community arts programming.

A site for Uncle Al & Mama Dee's Cafe; a multi-generational community arts and social justice eating and performance space.

Tierra Madre/Mother Earth: Following indigenous values of localizing food growth to cut down on greenhouse gases and poisoning of our communities, this will be a site for a 'sustainable urban farm' to teach children and adults in poverty how to grow their own organic and healthy food to eat and to economically sustain their families, so that they can permanently get out of poverty. Also will provide indigenous model of project based learning for FAMILY School providing space for elders to teach indigenous forms of math and science through earth and agriculture.

II. The Building:

A Mixed Use/C3-zoned, multiple units or Loft space with adjoining land or small yard that has space for all of the listed above.

III. Funding:

Equity "Capital" Campaign budget: (2.5 million)

Fundraising will occur through an "equity campaign," launched by POOR Magazine, which is an act of resistance to the hierarchal and unjust distribution of wealth and resources locally and globally. POOR Magazine is formally calling the fundraising effort for HOMEFULLNESS, an 'equity campaign,' instead of a 'capital campaign,' conducted through equity sharing, not tied to financial resources. We will be creating permanent and lasting solutions to houselessness for families in poverty, who have been displaced, evicted, gentrified and destabilized out of their indigenous lands and communities.

*After years of struggling to be heard and housed and working to organize, de-silence and power the scholarship of poor folks of color and urban indigenous peoples,I, tiny, one of the co-author's of the Manifesto, daughter of a disabled single mother of color/indigenous Boricua, African descent, in a life-long struggle for land and equity, hereby refuse to use the codified, meaningless label of "the homeless people" and will instead from hereon, identify our peoples position as landless peoples.

Photos by Pnn staff

The Altar for our Ancestors at Uncle Al and Mama Dee's Social Justice and Arts Cafe at POOR Magazine's Revolutionary Change Session 2009